


Wounds Yet Unhealed

by Bhelryss



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Post-BOFA, Slice of Life, vaguely connected shorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-09 15:13:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3254384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bhelryss/pseuds/Bhelryss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After all those years in exile, Durin's folk have lost much. They have their home, a safe place that promises strong walls and prosperity. They have a tentative alliance in the Men of Dale, and a non-hostile relationship with the Elves of the Mirkwood. </p><p>Here they can heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 18 Years

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> references to past character death,

Dáin II Ironfoot, once Lord of the Iron Hills and King Under the Mountain, sits quietly in his cousin’s chambers. He watches her pace the span of her room, filled with a terrible sort of anger and a grief that hasn’t eased at all. He says nothing, sitting in the corner while he cards a hand through his yet-uncombed beard.

The morning is still young, the sun still lays behind the horizon, but here he sits. “Eighteen years, Dáin.” Dís snarls, shoulders stiff and hair mussed from a restless night. Her head is still held high with an unbroken pride, Mahal knows not a child of Durin’s line is short of pride, though there are lines in her face that weren’t there twenty years ago.

“Aye.” He says after a long moment, having dropped her gaze first. He rubs his lone foot against the smooth wood of his informal prosthetic, thoughts dark. The sounds of Dís’ pacing started up again as he was lost in his own unhappy thoughts, and drew him back to the present. Eighteen years…

“He would have reached his first century, Dáin. My eldest, my Fee.” Dís says once she stops her pacing once more. “And Kíli wouldn’t be too far away, I - Eighteen years!” For a moment her face twists into an expression of despair beyond grief, and Dáin is reminded again of how much Thrain’s only daughter has lost.

What can he do but agree with her? He has no clever words to console her, no. A husband, her sons, her brothers and parents and grandparents. Dragonfire, madness and orcs, a mine collapse. Dáin sighs, and hauls his war-battered carcass up off its ass. “Aye, cousin.” He agrees solemnly, placing one rough hand on her shoulder.

Gently, Dáin loosely braids Dís’ hair, combing it with his fingers when he encounters snarls. Her beard requires nothing from him, she’s kept it shorn in her grief. “If ye’d like,” He says quietly as he ties off the loose braid, “I know of a few sets o’ ruined armor.” He brushes one strand of hair back behind her ear and gestures out the door. “If smashing something might help.” 


	2. Cold Comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dáin-centric, set 5 years after retaking the mountain. Thorin Stonehelm would be about 80, of age but still young.

Dáin slumps on the throne, cold stone a mildly unpleasant prickle through his clothes, daily audiences finished. He looks upward, toward the ceiling veined with gold, past the Arkenstone directly above his head, and groans aloud. Dís stands off to the left, with Balin and a few other advisors, and Dáin wonders again why he let her talk him into accepting her abdication.

He was not meant to be a king, not of Erebor. Lord? He’d been a Dwarf Lord for many years, since Azanulbizar, since the death of his own father. It had been hard, but he’d had his father’s support network and a people long stable. Erebor was a dusty wreck he inherited from one cousin only hours dead and one who was bitterly sad, mourning the loss of the last of her immediate family.

He hoped he had done Thorin Oakenshield proud, though he knew the tentative peace with the Elves no doubt had the briefly crowned Dwarrow turning over in his grave. King Bard and his children were leading the Men to a bright future, and he’d already attended one royal wedding in the short five years he’d been ruling. (Sigrid had wasted no time dancing out of the line of succession and wedding the smiling maid she was sweet on.)

He’s been very pleased, at the frequent meetings between himself and the other kings. Thranduil, behind his cold sneer and Elvish distance, has a good head on his shoulders and cares deeply for his own people. Bard has more sense than charm, but a damnably endearing sense of honor and a marvellous track record already of caring for a downtrodden town. He could have had worse neighbors, he thinks.

“Hello Thorin, my lad.” Dáin says tiredly to his son, not surprised his boy has come looking for him when he realizes how long he’s been sitting and thinking, who looks upon his father with a wide smile. His wee lad, who wasn’t so wee anymore. “Late for supper again, am I? Ach, let’s not keep your mother waiting then.”

The clanging of his metal foot on the stone has long stopped bothering him. He’s lived with it most of his life, after all. His newest wound, the one a lucky goblin bastard gave him during the fight for Erebor, still throbs on cold nights...but for now it is forgotten. In the chatter of his son (“Adad, you’ll never guess what cousin Gimli has done now!”), Dáin can put aside his soul’s aches.

He dreams of red clay soil and ruinous rapids that night, and wakes with the smell of rust in his nose. Unforgivably homesick, he stares blankly up at the grey stone ceiling of his chambers and listens to his wife and queen’s relaxed breaths.

_Ach, Thorin...you wretched bastard. I hope I’m doing you and your blasted mountain proud. Next time you’d best live to rule your own fool kingdom, instead of leaving me to do it for you_. 


	3. Lady Dís Arrives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dís-centric, and she's not a particularly happy entity

Dís is newly arrived to the mountain, welcomed into the halls that should have been her brother’s, her sons’, by her cousin. She is months into her mourning, beard shorn and her usual braids absent. All who look upon her know the depths of her sorrow, they will see her unbraided hair and bare cheeks and will simply, intrinsically _know_. Dáin smiles wanly, “Dís, cousin! Ach, how pleased I am to welcome ye to your mountain!”

Her mouth turns down at the corners, but she follows Dáin through the newly remade gates regardless. Her cousin walks stiffly, as though the movement pulls at some unhealed wound, and she tries not to focus on the way his iron foot clanks against the stone. “...reshoring the mines is taking a wee bit longer than expected, but that Bifur lad has a good stone sense about him. It’s expected to be completed in a few months, at least according to Gloin. That lad has a head for numbers, Dís.”

He seems quite willing to fill in the silence, letting her know about how the rest of her last brother’s company is doing. The library, sealed as it was against fire, survived the dragon’s habitation. “That young Ori, he comes out covered in dust and beaming fit to shame us all. A queer lad, but a good one.” She doesn’t want to hear of Ori’s luck, digging up tomes that had been mourned for over a century.

She doesn’t particularly want to hear about any of it. Doesn’t want to hear about “Master Dori’s” take-charge approach that has involved commandeering several of the best workshops for the Weaver’s Guild, nor how “Master Bombur’s” cooking prowess even with (or specifically because of) their meagre rations has stunned the entire mountain. She can’t handle thinking about how Bofur’s toys have already begun enchanting the few younglings of Bard Dragonslayer’s people. Her heart yearns for Ered Luin, with its cold halls. The warmth of Erebor, retaken at last, is at odds with the ice in her soul. Dís looks upon Erebor and remembers smoke, mourning her mother, grandmother, and maternal aunt and uncle. Smoke, fire, death and the following march.

Once, she is sure, she might have remembered better things, but her years have not been kind and all she can seem to recall are the horrors and tragedies. Around one corner, a familiar tapestry (faded by time and lack of care, but undergoing restoration carried out by diligent, reverent members of the weaver’s guild) might remind her of her grandmother’s effortless grace as she walked with her youngest grandchild through Erebor’s craftsmen’s district, but the sight of another not even a proper stone’s throw away might remind her of the terror and grief of _knowing_ that Queen Vira had not made it out of the mountain with King Thrór and the others.

The sound of Dáin’s people, those of the Iron Hills who’d stayed behind with their lord, the families who’d come after the battles had ended (some were doubtless the survivors of Smaug that had fled to that settlement after, but others still were Dáin’s rough and ready people come to eke fortune out of the wilderness Erebor had become), their eager calls and open hospitality were rough on her. It should have been a balm, their generosity borne of the interdependency of their native community. It grated on her, because it felt like pity.

“Poor Princess Dís,” are the gist of the whispers. “A lonely Queen for a Lonely Mountain.” The weeks in which she helps settle the caravans of Ered Luin, she hears more talk. Her people, Dáin’s people...no matter where she goes, whispers of her right to rule pervade. The last of Durin’s most direct descendants, Dís daughter of Thráin. She has caught the tail ends of talks of coronations, and she is not pleased.

“I will not be taking the throne.” She says imperiously, when Balin and Dáin confront her (Dwalin hovers in the distance, and she knows that look he watches her with. Knows it intimately. He used to look at Thorin that way). Her shoulders are set and she stands tall and proud in the face of Dáin’s questions and Balin’s infuriatingly knowing grimace. “I abdicated my right to the succession when I wed my One.” And she throws a particularly vicious stare at Balin (because they were both familiar with the vow she’d given on her wedding day to never seek the throne herself, seeing as Balin had helped administer it! The price of wedding her simple miner had been worth it, and she’d never regretted throwing her birthright to the winds), who looks like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

“I will not be taking it.” She reiterates, when Dáin begins his counterarguments. And, to fully put the topic to rest, she turns on her heel and stalks away. They cannot talk her into it, if she will not listen. Her cousins can hover in the distance and wish she would be Queen all they like, she will not do it.

Dáin’s coronation is a year later, and the sour look on his face when he thinks no one can see are almost enough to make her smile again. _Almost._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bombur's particular reputation is in part on the assumption that even with supplies brought in from the Iron Hills, things are going to be a little tight for a few years (especially in the winters), though that won't stop anybody from having get-togethers or feasts for weddings or courtship dinners.
> 
> I figure that until Dís and those from Ered Luin arrive, the population of Erebor is going to be enough that with enough squeezing you could feasibly get them all into a large dining hall.


End file.
